US 20110224962 A1 is related to an electrophysiological testing simulation for medical condition determination, wherein an aim is to identify scar tissue. This is done by thresholding, wherein scar tissue is identified due to different intensities. The eventual simulation is provided only for diagnosis purposes.
US 20100191131 A1 is related to a method of noninvasive electrophysiological study of the heart, wherein activation maps are obtained of a surface heart model, which might be used by a medical practitioner to estimate where conduction tracts or structures might be located.
In electrophysiological procedures, a scar in the heart tissue is created, for example, by ablation to interrupt an abnormal electrical conduction e.g. in case of atrial flutter. In the ablation procedure, it is important to know the location of the physiological conduction tracts like the Bachmann's bundle and Purkinje fibres since they have a specific function and their ablation would irrevocably destroy the normal conduction pathways of the heart. This especially holds for the Bachmann's bundle which originates in the sinoatrial node and is therefore the only tract that conducts action potentials to the left atrium.
In addition, there are also cases in which a therapy is provided involving voluntarily ablating a conduction tract of the heart. An example of such therapy is related to atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia (AVNRT) involving usually two anatomical pathways, a fast pathway and a slow pathway (both in the right atrium). A successful catheter ablation of the slow pathway may result in curing the patient from AVNRT.
Currently, no information about the physiological conduction tracts like the Bachmann's bundle is available to the physician in an ablation procedure since these structures are neither visible on intra-interventionally acquired x-ray images nor on pre-interventionally acquired CT and MR images.